


Supplication

by BoltGSR



Category: Bionicle - All Media Types
Genre: A great being OC goes looking for Kaita and gets more than she bargained for, Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Shattering, i'll never stop trying to mix the hard sci-fi of late bionicle with the fantasy of early, you can't tell me there wasn't any GBs who were like "yo hold up this is a little messed up"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:53:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25830127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoltGSR/pseuds/BoltGSR
Summary: The hour draws near when the Great Beings will send the Matoran Universe out into the stars in the hope that its people can one day undo the damage they have done.In a place long forgotten - a place that brought about the end of everything - a single scientist makes a plea to gods that may not even exist.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Supplication

**Author's Note:**

> As with a lot of my fusion work, elements of this (most notably Jahaka and Nuakuta, as well as the term Vhotai) were created by Demitsorou.

The earth is old and the air is still.

This place sits empty, its purpose long since fulfilled. The lords it birthed clash now above the surface, their ambitions drawing this planet closer to its destined end. It has been years since a Great Being has set foot in this chamber. Tonight, that changes.

A door atop endless stairs creaks open, shaking off the dust of time as it does. Through it steps a figure garbed in the grand robes of the High Council. She moves quicky and silently, the mask across her face locked into an empty expression. She should not be here, not when there is still so much to be done. There is no guarantee Mata Nui will ever escape this planet, nor that its denizens will be successful in its mission. 

But Gelea knows that they have passed the point where another night of tinkering will make any difference. The future of their peoples is in the hands of the gods now.

So she has come to make her case to the gods.

The room hums as she descends the stairs to the dais below. This place is empty, but it is _charged_. She once commanded the elements here, along with her fellow scientists, and bound them to mortal beings. It was for power’s sake; it was for knowledge’s sake. It was hubris, and every one of them there had known it, even if none of them had the courage to admit it. 

The story of the Great Beings is the story of progress, hard and scientific. It is the story of a people who chose to use their knowledge of the world to shape it, and in turn to control it. There is no magic to be found in the tales they tell each other, no greater force that cannot be understood and explained. To hear them tell it, in time they will know how to write the code of reality itself.

Perhaps that is why this place, once their greatest laboratory, the site of some of their most earth-shattering breakthroughs, has been abandoned. Because as that bastard Telerus once put it, “it’s all well and good to acknowledge that every element in the universe seems to have gathered in this cave - but would anyone like to posit a guess as to _why_ this cave in particular?”

Gelea hadn’t, nor Wundai nor Ec’cen nor Angonce. “We found a magic cavern” did not hold with the scientific method. 

There was _something_ here, something that was beyond all their instruments and theorizing. Something echoed in the legends of the Agori and Glatorian, that resonated in the soul of every Great Being who had set foot into this room. An intelligence, or perhaps just a force, watching over all those who played with the building blocks of existence. 

Gelea strides to the center of the room, her robes leaving long trails in the dust behind her. Part of her insists that all this is absurd, that her time was better spent -

_Better spent what? Waiting to give the order for all of us to seal ourselves away until the world has ended and returned?_

She shakes her head. She has not come here for her own people. She is here because they have chosen to dabble in the realm of the elements once more, and in ways far more dangerous than before. The creation of the Element Lords had been hubris, true. But the creation of the automatons that now fill the Mata Nui project was - well, she could not quite deny it when she heard the Glatorian refer to it as a perversion of life itself. The Matoran and Toa were created in their image, given minds of metal and a connection to the elements they believed they had brought to heel. 

_Believed_ being the key word.

She reaches the center of the room, feels a chill run through her. Her mask, myriad in its powers, would have let her know if anyone had followed her, so she knows she is alone. And yet-

_If you think we are here_ , something seems to whisper in her mind, _then call for us._

No. She hadn’t heard anything. This whole experiment was a waste of time. 

But Gelea has some pride as a scientist, and that pride does not come from any deep-seated belief in the power of rationality. It comes from a willingness to seek new horizons, however unlikely they might seem. She has come this far; she has a duty to test her hypothesis.

With a deep breath, she reaches into her robes and draws out an old scroll. She has sent for it in secret, had it taken from an Agori shrine that had been abandoned in the aftermath of the Fire Lord’s campaign. It is perhaps ten years old, a copy of a copy of a copy of an ancient call passed down for generations. 

She clears her throat and begins to read.

_We speak of Akamai, dragon of valor. Born from the volcano, with blood of magma and scales of stone. Whose flames drive away corruption, whose claws carve the blackened earth that new life might take root there._

_We speak of Wairuha, raptor of wisdom. Born from the sky, with blood of seawater and feathers of ice. Whose breath bestows knowledge, whose sight blesses the land it watches over._

Something stirs in the dark.

_We speak of Jahaka, hunter of instinct. Born from the beasts, whose blood runs in us all and whose flesh is our own. In the hunt their flames drive us, their waters restore us, their air sustains us._

_We speak of Nuakuta, keeper of knowledge. Born from the hills, whose blood is the words we speak and whose flesh is the stories we tell. Through them we freeze moments into memory, carve them into stories from which our children may learn and grow._

She reads down the list, even as the room grows heavy, even as whispers fill the air. 

When she reaches the end of the scroll, there is silence.

But not for long. She has called them, and so they come.

They stare out at her from the air, shapes shifting and dancing in the emptiness. They change forms with a thought, unable to or perhaps simply uninterested in choosing a single shape. The only thing consistent is their colors, radiant and chaotic, snippets of pure elemental energy. Their voices are hums, sighs, whispers, cacophony and harmony. 

Gelea feels somewhat sick to her stomach, partially because her mind isn’t quite able to comprehend what it’s seeing and partially because this is a brutal, simple repudiation of the elemental mastery the Great Beings felt they had achieved. If spirits were real, if they lived among and within the elements themselves, what else was hiding just out of sight of their sciences?

But this is not the time for regrets and doubts. She has come to make a request, and make it she will. 

She clears her throat. “Kaita,” she calls.

The spirits murmur. _Not only. Vhotai. Kaita. Aspects of Nui. Things that you have no word for._

She nods, still struggling against a sense of vertigo. “I… in truth, I can barely grasp what any of you are. But I know you are of the elements.”

One surges forward out of the dark. When she looks at it with one eye, she sees a titan clad in armor, almost resembling a Glatorian; when she looks at it with another she sees a dragon like a man, smoke curling from his snout. _We are as much of the soul as we are of the elements. We are the union of the physical and the spiritual; we are the shape of the world and the wishes of its inhabitants._

Gelea nods again, even though she barely understands the meaning of the spirit’s message. “I have come to ask you something.”

_We know._

She takes a deep breath and draws from her robe a mask. A Kaukau, stained blue from the manufacturing process. A thing without an owner. 

“Our world is dying.”

_By your hand._

“Yes,” she replies, unflinching. “By our hand. Our curiosity raised us out of the dirt; I will not apologize for it simply because it eventually returned us to it. But I am not here to speak of my people or our punishment.”

She holds the Kaukau out, and another spirit, its eyes shining white, draws close to it, looks down at it impassively. Gelea turns to face it, the lines of her own mask still drawn tight, closing off any emotion. “Even now, the Matoran build their home. We are to send them on a heartless journey; theirs is a universe made to correct our own mistakes, to one day lead us to salvation.

“We built them of metal and muscle, gave them clockwork minds and mechanical souls. If all goes well, they will never think a stray thought, never stray from their duties. That is the ‘life’ we have given our children.”

She knows it is a terrible thing they have done. Even the spirits, impassive as they seem, darken in some imperceptible way. 

“But we are not gods. I cannot say what will become of this universe when we send it out into ours. Perhaps those inhabiting it will choose to throw away their chains, to abandon us entirely. For even if I believed us perfect creators - and I do not - we imbued them with something I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt we cannot understand and cannot control.”

Gelea lifts the Kaukau into the air, as though to gift it to them. “They are creatures of the elements, as surely as the Element Lords were. And so I believe they are owed your guidance.”

There is a murmur in the air, and the spirit that took an interest in the Kaukau speaks, sounding almost bemused. _You misunderstand. They are not owed anything. To say as much is to say the seas are owed the water they are made of._

“I imagine you’re right. Then let me abandon all pretense.” Gelea raises her other hand to her face and tears away her own mask. She looks out at the spirits before her with her naked face, that they may see her for themselves. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse, weighed down by the ravages of time. “I did not come here to speak in tautologies, or to receive a philosophy lesson. I came because our legends speak of you as spirits that shaped the earth and guided us when we were still young, before we became fools in our wisdom, and I must know for myself that you will not shirk that duty. Watch over this world we have created, I beg of you. Do not be disgusted by the patchwork souls we have made; give them your strength and protection, as you ever did for us. Give them more. Even if they turn from you, wait patiently for even one of them to return to you for guidance.”

One of the Kaita speaks; she does not recognize it, cannot begin to hope to understand what it is, but she is past the point of caring. _Do you presume that we need such instruction?_

“I presume nothing. If my journey here has been for naught - if not a single word that has escaped my mouth changes what any of you feel - then so be it. But it is my duty to give what I can to the people we have made.” She looks to the ground, her grip tightening on her mask. “I could not go without doing at least this much.”

There is silence in the chamber. 

When at last one of the spirits speaks, its voice is warm in a way none of them has been. _In the end, you cannot begin to understand us, Gelea. Not in the way Takua did the moment he opened his eyes. The people you have made are tied to us, and us to them. We are called to guide them, as they are called to us. The day may come when we walk among them, their bodies and souls united with our own._

_But your words are not meaningless. It has been too long since we walked the earth, and many of us have forgotten what it is to see the world through the eyes of those who inhabit it. Your plea was not necessary, but we will carry it with us all the same. And when the Matoran awaken to us, we will welcome them with the knowledge that at least one of their creators truly cared for them._

“That is all I can ask for,” she says quietly.

In an instant, they are gone. A sudden, crushing wave of loneliness smothers Gelea, and she stumbles backwards, biting her tongue to keep herself from crying for them to come back. A hundred questions run through her mind - have these spirits watched over them all these years? When had they last walked amongst them? Could they not help the Great Beings and Glatorian and Agori as well, in their hour of need?

But the words die upon her lips. The spirits’ vanishing is their answer. If there was a time when they could help the people of Spherus Magna, it is long past. 

With a sigh, she affixes her mask to her face, lets it return to its blank expression. Then she kneels and lifts the Kaukau from where she has dropped it, looks over it sadly. It is to be worn by one of the first Toa; even now, she knows Helryx and Wundai are hard at work putting the finishing touches on their designs. 

She thinks again of the spirit that had taken such a keen interest in it, and smiles to herself. _Heed Wairuha’s words well, Gali. Let them guide you where I cannot._

She turns and climbs the steps, sealing the door behind her as she leaves.

The earth is old and the air is still, but this place is not empty.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Apologies if you were confused by the mention of a character named "Telerus" when there is a canon character named "Telluris"; I named the former a long time ago and couldn't bring myself to get rid of the name when I found out about the latter. Then again, this is also the series where there is a Makuta Teridax and a Makuta Tridax, so.


End file.
